


Some Say Fire

by mercuriosities



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Auruo Bossard - Freeform, Oluo Bozado - Freeform, Petra Ral - Freeform, Petruo, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, thinking about this made me cry in the shower so I knew I had to write it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:44:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2376926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuriosities/pseuds/mercuriosities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In every time line, and every universe, Auruo Bossard is cursed to watch and remember as Petra dies first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Say Fire

“Oh, Paris is beautiful in the spring.”

The voice was a familiar one. It shouldn’t have been, Auruo realized, as he turned without thinking and swept his critical hazel eyes over the crowd behind him. It shouldn’t have been familiar because he had never heard it before, even though the soft feminine tones settled into his ears with the ease of years of listening. It made him uncomfortable; deja vu always did. He hated feeling out of place, off-kilter, out of control.

And he would continue to hate it when he took in the redheaded, golden-eyed sum of her, the source of that voice in the park behind him.

He knew it instantly. Gingers weren’t common in France and the words were spoken in English, so she would have been a likely candidate but even with all of that he knew instinctively that the speaker had been her. And in the same way that her voice was brand new but he had known it all his life, so had he known the sight of her: carrot hair cropped at her shoulders, her frame so petite that she barely reached his. He knew intimately, uncomfortably, the silky softness of her dark lashes, the dusting of freckles across her nose. He wondered, before he stamped down on his wondering, if it was still over three hundred freckles, and if he would ever count them again. 

It hit him with such force, all of this together, that he shifted backward as if actually struck.

And that sudden movement is what got her attention - and when she looked at him, and he stared back, the world pitched forward.

* * *

He remembered too well how her uncommon copper hair had slipped through his fingers, copper like the coins he’d palmed that morning from his father to take her out to the market in the forum. She’d slipped her sandals off, which she always did, and he always teased her about, because a good Roman woman always wore her shoes and kept her feet clean - but she would always tell him she wasn’t a good Roman woman because Roman women weren’t also half Gaulish. The patterned tile of the plaza was hot beneath her feet and she leaped and danced, yelping at the sting, and he fell in love with her all over again.

Later that love would catch and burn in his throat - burn with the ash that clogged his nose and eyes, the fire in the skies raining down and bringing a sheet of acrid black night into all of Pompeii. Later, he would search for her, search almost in vain - and later he would think that it would have been better if it _had_ been, because finding her golden eyes tarnished over with the dull stain of death was worse than anything his poor teenaged heart could manage. 

He combed his fingers through her hair one last time and helped her close her eyes, and wiped the blood from her lips with his thumb. He’d cupped her face like this before, brushed her lips like this before - but as the earth revolted underneath him and Pompeii fell to dust, he realized it had not ever been enough. 

* * *

He knew how warm her hands could be in contrast to a frigid night because he’d held them so tightly before. He’d clutched them tightly to his chest, hauled her back toward the wrecked lifeboat as the giant queen of an ocean liner sank behind them, squeezed her fingers to keep them from turning blue as the salty water dragged her dress down. He held her close and cursed his foolish intuition, how he’d set foot on the ship earlier that week only to smell the smokestacks - and he’d wanted to grab her and run for his life. Smoke did not belong near Petra, not when she burned clear and bright as any sun, not when she’d seared himself into his heart and mind so thoroughly that he thought he might have loved her beyond lifetimes.

Smoke rose again in the air around them as the Titanic shuddered and tipped upward further, the acrid taste all too familiar in his mouth - but at least this time her eyes were bright, at least this time he might still save her. At least this time he could still hold on.

He held onto that like a mantra, clung to it the way he clung to her hands, even when the warmth had left them entirely and they were frozen to his own.

* * *

He knew the sum of her freckles because he’d been sent up to check on her night after night, to climb through the trap door in his attic to the hidden room toward the back and make sure she was sound asleep, that the window was closed, that the blinds were drawn, that she was safe, safe, safe. He’d known her and those freckles all his life - Petra Ral, daughter of Ezekiel Ral, the banker Jew who lived down the street and handled all the finances for his family, the German immigrants from ages before even the Great War. They’d been well loved by the neighborhood; loved enough that when the Nazis swept through, Ezekiel had the opportunity to leave swiftly in the night for the promised free land of America

But he’d had to leave his beloved daughter behind.

So he left her with the Bossards, begged them to take care of her and hide her away since her Ashkenazi features were far too blatant to pass off as one of their own. Auruo had sworn to himself then - and to her, later, when he sat with her in the attic and held her trembling frame close - _and how many times had he held her close in the plaza, under ash, in a ballroom, in the water -_ that he would keep her alive.

In the end, he couldn’t keep even that most important promise. In the end, the Nazis ransacked Alsace, tore apart every single house they could find, and ripped her from his arms.

He screamed then, as he would scream later for his family found guilty for sheltering a Jew, wordless in his agony at knowing with the certainty of a soul just a bit too old that once again he’d had failed the only woman he would ever love.

* * *

Auruo knew too well the bright emotion of her eyes because he’d once had hours upon days to stare into them; reading them, reading her, had been a matter of life or death. He was fifteen years old before she'd stepped into his life - one of the latest she'd appeared, and after she had he cursed her for days, hoping then that the cycle he had come to know so well had been broken. He'd been born behind walls that time, hiding from faceless terrors named titans, born with a fire in his gut and a deep hatred at being caged in like livestock because of the easily manipulated fear of mankind. Against all advice he joined the army, talking to anyone who would listen about freedom and righteousness and making the world a better place for the future. But when she with her fiery hair and fiery temper stormed into his training cohort he knew then that with the world they lived in there was no saving her.

So he tried his best to keep her at arm’s length, too wounded still from memories that weren’t rightfully his to be ready to watch her die again - but as with every time he and Petra danced around the sun in their tightrope waltz, he could not help but fall in love. They were a matched pair and he knew it, he’d always known it, and as time passed from training into the corps, and the corps into the special operations squad, he found he could stand back and watch her when he thought she wasn’t looking and slowly those wounds began to heal.

He’d learned the way her eyes flashed when she was angry, the way they burned when she was determined, and the warm ember glow of them when her head rested on his pillow. He learned the freckles on her shoulders because he already knew too well the ones that dusted her nose. He held her hand a little too tightly, traced the brand new calluses on what had been a ladylike palm, found he liked it better when she could grip his fingers just as tight.

And just when he felt comfortable enough to love her and be honest about it, fire took her again in the shape of a traitor to their cause, a cracked spine, and a pine tree. And the last thing Auruo knew, aside from the blinding hellish heat of the anger that ate away every last shred of humanity within him was that he had never, never felt more betrayed.

* * *

When the world spun back into place again Auruo thought he might be sick.

The park around them was too quiet, and here he was still staring at this stranger, and while every time he had known her before time had seemed to move too fast - now it had slowed to an agonizing halt.

At least she was staring back.

“Do I - know you?” She asked, and more than anything he wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her and tell her _yes, yes, you do, and I know you. Your name is Petra Ral and your favorite color is yellow and tree pollen makes you sneeze, and I’ve loved you for probably as long as the world has existed. I know the feel of your fingers in my hand better than I know how to play La Marseillaise on the piano. And I’ve watched you die of everything from the bubonic plague to drowning to volcano day, and I can’t imagine the world is giving you over again for a happy ending because I don’t believe in them anymore._

But instead he thrust his hands in the pockets of his jacket and leveled his gaze at hers -

Hoping beyond hope for a golden spark of recognition -

Fishing though the worn pockets of his mind for English that was rusty and clumsy after years of disuse -

“I’m not sure,” he finally responded, and carefully, so as not to give too much away too soon. 

“But I would like to find out if you do.”

 


End file.
